


On the Wings of a Dove

by mechanonymouse



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 17:16:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20213404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechanonymouse/pseuds/mechanonymouse
Summary: The angsty remix ofBut love brings much happiness - much more so than pining brings painPrincess Consort Annabelle falls for her husband’s mistress, Isabella - a favoured younger cousin of King Patrick. Her marriage is as political one, not a happy one, meant to unite the northern borderlands whose loyalty is split between her husband and King Patrick and for her husband to dally with his favoured cousin is an insult that threatens both her and Isabella’s families.





	On the Wings of a Dove

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fleurting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurting/gifts).
  * Inspired by [But love brings much happiness - much more so than pining brings pain](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20032468) by [mechanonymouse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechanonymouse/pseuds/mechanonymouse). 

> _But love brings much happiness - much more so than pining brings pain_ should be read first.

She’s beautiful, his Calun girl. Not that this southern court recognises it, they call her coarse and pale. The ladies whispers that her hair is an unflattering shade of black like a crow and her eyes so pale it’s like they aren’t there. 

Her skin is so pale it is translucent, you can trace the feathery blue veins that transport her heart’s blood through her body and warm her flesh. I wonder could you trace them through her legs and torso like her arms and face? Are her breasts so fair you can see what makes them? Are her nipples the same shocking red as her lips? So bright against her fair skin it seems as though she has just bitten into a juicy berry. Her cheeks are barely dusted with freckles, kisses from our cold northern sun. Is all her skin similarly dusted? Could her lover trace constellations on her skin? My husband could answer all of these questions. If he cared to answer. If I dared to ask. Her eyes remind me the waterfall above my father’s keep that we used to swim during summer and her hair of a sleek raven on our Eleanor’s shoulder but it is her voice that catches my attention and haunts my dreams. It lilts and trills, the melodic sounds of home and I hear our language spoken, sung, for the first time since I came to court. 

When she arrived at my lord husband’s court, this Calun girl - playmate to the Ambassador’s daughter, she was shy and demering but she seemed happy. She sung and played with her charge. Since she has captured my lord’s attention I hear her voice less often, and when I do it is the songs of loss and mourning she sings. The songs I have wished to sing since my marriage. I see her tear stained face is the small private places I come to breathe and cry my own sorrows out. Would that I could claim my lord’s attentions as mine alone and keep him from hurting any other. Would that he keep his attentions to married women willing to stray and whores compensated, not defile another maiden. Were but wishes horses and consequences naught, I would ride away from this place and take her with me to safety. I cannot even berate him for his indecency for my lord is banned from my chamber, on my physician’s orders until this babe is born, and he must slack his needs elsewhere.

* * *

His Calun girl is cousin to the king and a favoured one, I’m not sure if my lord realises. At the midsummer gathering, the only one I remember where the young King Patrick was there she sat at his knee and danced for his pleasure. My lord’s anger if this babe is not healthy and male will be extensive but the threat to my family if he continues to force his Calun girl clutches my soul and my parents write of new tensions at the border and anger at his insult on both sides of the border. There are rumbles of discontent between the Northern lords. My marriage has one purpose, my life one reason to bind my Northern Home in peace with this Southern Court or prove it is impossible and allow us to cede. If Jamie, if Eleanor, if little Meggy, if any of them were to suffer for his pleasures it would kill me. I cannot but hope for this child to be born soon and for success in drawing my lord’s attention back to me. 

* * *

My dreams are torment. Each night I relive my greatest sins. I’m tied in my father’s hay loft completely at her mercy, my- our Eleanor cruelly teasing me. My cunt as hot and heavy as it was that day. Then Eleanor is gone and Alison is teasing me, then Tessa, then Rosie, then my lord’s Calun mistress and they touch me as she did not and their phantom touch brings me pleasure my lord has never done. I guilty watch Alison bathe in the river above my father’s keep only this time I’m touching myself. Rubbing my throbbing cunt, twisting my nipples, imagining touching her and she changes before my eyes to Eleanor, to Tessa and always we end on my lord’s Calun girl, his Isabella. I have never felt this way before so consumed with lust. I have never felt like this for my lord nor any other man. My sweetest dream, the one that makes me guiltiest, is of Tessa kissing me thinking I to be Jamie but she never stays Tessa in my dreams she shifts and morphs to Isabella and I am brave enough to let her lead me to an alcove and touch her. 

* * *

For all Isabella’s looks remind me of a raven and make me wish to see her flying free on the moors far from this city, her manner is that of the dove. Fragile and gentle; sweet in voice and word. 

The first harvest of spring has come, and she is the person of my land I know best in this foreign land. If this southern place where the frosts come barely a moon before the solstice and disappear when the year is but a babe in arms ever had our traditions of celebrating the spring, they have lost it. There is no one else to sing the joy of spring’s new life or celebrate that we have survived another winter and the gods blessed our fields. I cannot even even sing to my son, my Michael, for he is already gone from my arms, at his estate with a _proper southern wet nurse and household_ so I cannot not corrupt the future king with my northern ways. Instead we exchanged gifts, things so small and meaningless you would think us the poorest peasants not favoured in the royal court, in hidden places and weep silent tears for our home and our souls. 

We talk in hushed voices of what news we can gather of home. There is a king’s boundary between our fathers lands but no line on a map ever stopped a sheep from grazing, clipped a ravens wings nor told a river where to flow. No man can cross the border by the King’s Road while my lord mocks King Patrick so, but that doesn’t stop the shepherds. Our fathers and brothers are at the forts fighting daily and still my lord, King Edward, declares the Calun king weak and refuses to treat with him or send more men to the border. We fear for our men folk. 

The sight of her pain makes me wish I could kiss it all away like lovemaking was more than a pleasant diversion with one you wish and a necessary chore without. 

* * *

My brother, my twin, the other half of my being is taken. Captive to King Patrick and the only comfort I have is his cousin. My lord bans me from paying his ransom, refuses to send men to the border declaring them too much to risk for so little and will not stop aggravating the Calun King. My father and Jamie’s wife, our beloved Eleanor, have plead my brother’s case, our land’s case to no avail. Isabella is my only comfort and we may only weep silently in hidden corners and catch each other’s eye across the court. She is a dove, a messenger from the gods who lets me keep going, just as trapped in this miserable situation as I. 

My lord needs another son and he will have one even if it kills me. Preferably if it kills me, for he cannot set me aside without the Northern Lord’s rebelling and ceding to Calun and if the Northern Lords cede his Privy Council will rebel and he be king no more. 

* * *

He will kill us both and dance upon our graves and in doing so he will kill our country. Even this southern place he claims to love. 

King Edward the Incompetent, King Edward the Drunkard, King Edward the Lout, whisper the court. Lords from the midlands are lending men to the Northern border against my lord’s orders and he does not have the strength to rebuke them. We are weak on all borders because of his philandering. If he would set Isabella aside and fuck only willing whores and ladies, we would have allies still. The Southern Courts have never allied with Calun before, now their ambassadors withdraw and leave their return until the insult to their ally is resolved. That the Calun ambassador remains is solely to show he would continue to rub insult in and is too immature to meet with his neighbour’s man and treat despite his army at his gate. 

He has his way, a child he has fucked in to me and I fear one in Isabella again which he will beat out of her with as much vigour as he did last time. 

I wish Lord Aidan would take her from this place for it will kill her to remain and I think her loss would take me to but my lord has ruined her and I fear she is already too frail to make the journey back to her father’s lands by ship. When we die this land will descend to war and those we love will suffer because of it. That is all that keeps us breathing. Brittle determination that will crack if pushed too hard. 

* * *

The bairn is born too soon and sickly, my lord is dead, the country stands on the eve of war, and somehow Isabella and I still breathe. 

We sit in this tangled mess of skirts, legs and veils, weeping, laughing and not caring who can see us. This feels unreal. We are released, the land is released. With sloppy, giddy glee my Isabella pulls me to her and peppers my face with wet, awkward kisses for she cannot stop laughing or crying. King Edward had been barely gone four days this morning when news arrived and in our tangled state the bruises he left upon us for safekeeping are visible for all to see. And stare the courtiers do but I can not make myself move nor care. We sit and laugh, and cry, and kiss until the Queen Mother gathers us up and ushers us in to her room. 

We are released from our tormentor and in our release the country will fall. Those we love will suffer as we would never have wished them to and yet our release is relief we cannot grieve. 

* * *

She is beautiful, my Calun girl. Not that the southern court noticed but that does not matter for we are free to walk our border lands together, hands entwined and never to be slaves to another man again. To sleep with ease and love with joy. To speak freely and cry audibly. 

That Southern Court that held us captive is vassal to our Northern King, our good King Patrick who unites our lands in peace. Ruled by his council until my Michael is old enough to rule for him. May he be a good lord under his grandmother’s tutelage at Patrick’s court for we must tend our graves until we join them. My Jamie’s, my Eleanor, my Aaron, my Mary, my Richard, my mother, my father, my little Meggy, Isabella’s father, her mother, her Sean and Sian. 

For war even short is brutal, and love can heal only so much. 


End file.
